It's the unwritten law that no one's allowed to talk about the time Sanzo ended up in a wedding dress. Sometimes Gojyo talks about it anyway.

"Once upon a time, about three weeks ago now, we met this princess who would've been a total babe if it weren't for the fact that she looked almost exactly like Ol Droopy Eyes over there. Yeah, the Sanzo, who else would I be talking about? Anyway, we're sitting down to dinner in some fancy inn when these guards come charging in and try to grab Sanzo. They're only human, though, so I just dig in while Goku's distracted. Not much else to do the way that kid inhales food.

"Anyway, once the monkey'd shown those bastards a thing or two, they start going on about how their princess had run off again, and Sanzo looked so much like her that they'd thought she'd hired a few ruffians (that's us) and was going to leave town disguised as the Sanzo going around fighting demons. They keep yappin for a while before Hakkai jumps out of his chair and grabs this girl who was about to leave the inn. Naturally she's the princess. We get the rest of the story out of them then, about how she keeps running away because her parents have sent her off to marry some creepy old guy who may or may not be a demon, yadda yadda yadda. We agree to help her, if only so we don't have to keep looking at this surreal image of Sanzo wibbling."

It's about here that Gojyo will pause to drain a beer or two and make sure Sanzo hasn't started paying attention. Once he's reasonably confident that a bullet from an exorcism gun isn't in his near future, he really gets going.

"Man, you guys should hear Hakkai telling this, he's so much better at the whole story thing than me. But where was I? Ah, so we all agreed that, seeing as the princess and her entourage were going in the same direction as we were, it couldn't hurt to travel together for a little while. Probably Sanzo just wanted to get a little petty revenge in the form of our mere presence drawing demons to the whole group, but he wouldn't admit it to us either way.

"After a few days on the road, we see this enormous dark castle looming up from the horizon, which was pretty damn cool. Most evil lairs these days are hardly anything more than a glorified house, just gradually growing bigger, but this place was like some mountain of evil and despair rising up beyond the edge of the world to bridge the lands of the dead and the living. Like I said, pretty damn cool. There's one small town left before we reach it, so we stop there for the night and get the best rooms possible at their shitty little tavern. While Sanzo's checking us in, though, little miss princess comes over and starts talking to me an Hakkai an the monkey about a plan she's got that she needs our help with.

"It's not the cleverest thing in the world, just your standard drag-an-switch, but Sanzo doesn't like to be the one in the dress (even if he's always wearing that girly-looking robe), so we'd have to knock him out first. We're not idiots, though, so we send Hakkai to get the right drugs and tell Sanzo he went to make sure Hakuryuu's comfortable for the night. (Can you believe a shithole like that wouldn't let us bring animals in? Now that's a double standard.)

"When Hakkai got back, he made sure to put the stuff in all of our glasses. It was specially designed for human bodies, see, so Sanzo'd pass right out while the rest of us got a little drowsy at most, and this way we wouldn't have to worry about which glass he took. Unfortunately it was either slower-acting than we'd thought or Sanzo's a freak of nature (which I'm pretty sure is the case anyway), because he didn't conk out right away, he just got all woogly. We took him upstairs anyway, and he passed out long enough for us to get him into the princess's fancy little wedding outfit, but he wouldn't stay unconscious! Every hour or so he'd be up like a shot, roaring and waving his gun and causing grown men downstairs to wet themselves, but we were used to it and just ran for our lives until he passed out again.

"Eventually Sanzo's really out for the night, and we get him all settled to play princess once morning comes. We all get a few hours of sleep and then set out for the castle. Remember how I was telling you how evil and ominous and stuff it looked? Inside was even worse. The colors were so insanely bright you'd think the sun had thrown up in this place and then thrown the roof on to keep from looking at it. No good person could live in a place like that, I'm tellin ya." Gojyo always shudders at this part, but he's probably exaggerating.

"Some little servant guys come in and escort Sanzo away to meet the old guy, leaving the rest of us to just stand around wondering. Probably half an hour's gone by when we hear a voice ringing through the halls: 'Die, you old pervert!' Then there's the familiar sound of a giant paper fan against someone's head, over and over and over again, and just when we're getting used to it there's a gunshot. Sanzo comes walking back out, his pretty little wedding dress all torn and splattered with blood, and he just looks at the princess with the most hateful glare I've ever seen and says 'if I ever see you again, you better pray to all you hold sacred that you see me first and have the sense to run the other way.' Then he takes all his stuff back, changes into his regular clothes, and we haven't seen or heard from her since."

Story finished, Gojyo usually chooses this time to take his winnings and leave the table. He doesn't have to distract the other card players to clean them out, but the good-natured tarnishing of a holy man's image is worth it.